Drowning Lawsuit: Liability, Damages, and Time Limits

A drowning lawsuit is a civil claim brought by a victim or a victim’s family to recover money from whoever’s negligence caused the drowning or near-drowning. Depending on the facts, that can mean the property owner, a pool operator, a lifeguard company, a school or camp, a babysitter, or the manufacturer of defective pool equipment.¹ Verdicts and settlements have ranged from modest sums to over $100 million, and the size usually tracks two things: how serious the injuries were and how clearly someone failed to do their job.

Who Can Be Sued After a Drowning

Liability rarely stops at the person who owns the pool. Courts have held a long list of defendants responsible when they had a duty to keep the victim safe and failed.

Homeowners, landlords, apartment complexes, hotels, and resorts owe a duty to keep conditions around water reasonably safe.²
Public pool operators and municipalities can be sued, though these claims face shorter deadlines and notice-of-claim rules.²
Lifeguards and the companies that employ them face liability for inattention or poor training. In the Weightman case, a Philadelphia jury awarded $24 million after evidence showed two teenage lifeguards at an apartment complex pool were lying down, one with her eyes closed, when a five-year-old drowned.³
Schools, daycares, and camps can be held liable for inadequate supervision. A $6.6 million verdict followed the drowning of an eight-year-old in an unattended camp pool, and a $5.12 million settlement resolved a case involving a student who drowned during an unauthorized off-campus outing supervised by school staff.⁴
Manufacturers of pool drains, pumps, gates, ladders, and flotation devices can face product liability claims when their equipment fails. Product liability can proceed under strict liability in many states, meaning the plaintiff needs to prove only that the product was defective and caused harm, not that the manufacturer was careless.⁵¹
Babysitting agencies and childcare providers can face liability when a caregiver they supplied failed to supervise a child near water.⁶

Most drowning cases plead more than one legal theory at once: ordinary negligence, premises liability for the condition of the property, product liability for defective equipment, wrongful death when the victim died, and sometimes negligence per se when a specific safety regulation was violated.⁷⁶

When the Victim Is a Child

Children are the most common victims in these cases, and the law raises the duty owed to them. Under the attractive nuisance doctrine, a pool owner can be liable for a trespassing child’s injuries if the owner knew children were likely to enter the area, the pool posed an unreasonable risk of serious harm, and the children were too young to appreciate that risk.⁸

In practice, that means pool owners in most states must take reasonable precautions, like fencing with self-latching gates, to keep unsupervised children out. Failure can create liability even for a child who was never invited onto the property.¹ A 2025 lawsuit filed by the parents of two-year-old Oakley Schmidt in Gorham, Maine, captures the pattern: the family alleged that a deteriorated chain-link fence around an apartment complex pool had holes functioning as a “makeshift ladder,” letting the toddler climb into the pool area unsupervised.⁹ The trespassing defense that might apply against an adult rarely helps a defendant when the plaintiff is a young child.

Drain Entrapment and the Virginia Graeme Baker Act

Suction entrapment cases involve a swimmer being pinned against a pool or spa drain by force strong enough that bystanders cannot pull the person free. Seven-year-old Virginia Graeme Baker died this way in June 2002 after sitting on an underwater drain in a hot tub. The suction holding her down was estimated at 700 pounds, and two men eventually broke the drain cover to release her.¹⁰

Congress passed the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act in December 2007.¹¹ It requires all pool and spa drain covers sold in the United States to meet federal anti-entrapment standards and requires public pools to install safety devices such as vacuum release systems or gravity drainage systems. Violations of the public pool requirements also count as violations of the Consumer Product Safety Act, which gives plaintiffs an additional basis for proving negligence.¹² The Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported zero drain entrapment deaths involving children in public pools and spas since the law took effect.¹³ Older pools with flat drain covers that lack pressure-release features remain a risk, and owners who skip the upgrade can face both premises liability and product liability claims.¹⁴

Open Water, Beaches, and Government Defendants

Not every drowning fits the pool template. Courts in many states treat lakes, rivers, and oceans as “open and obvious” dangers, so property owners and municipalities generally have no duty to warn about hazards like unexpected depth or currents. In Casper v. Charles F. Smith & Son (1989), a Maryland court held that the City of Baltimore had no obligation to warn about dangers in a stream, finding that such waters signal their own risks to anyone old enough to understand them.¹⁵

Government entities also invoke sovereign immunity and recreational use statutes. South Carolina’s Recreational Land Use Statute protects landowners who allow free public access from a duty of care, and courts have extended that protection to municipalities on drowning claims at public beaches.¹⁶ In Abel v. Lack’s Beach Service (2022), a Horry County jury awarded $20.73 million against a private beach safety franchisee for a drowning death, but the City of Myrtle Beach had already been dismissed on immunity grounds.¹⁷

Immunity isn’t absolute. When a government entity acts in ways that effectively designate an area for swimming, it can take on a duty to keep that area safe. In Andrews v. Department of Natural Resources (1990), a Florida court found that the state may have created an implied swimming area by removing “No Swimming” signs and distributing brochures that described Gulf waters as “enjoyed for swimming.”¹⁵

What You Can Recover

The categories of compensation depend on whether the victim survived and on the law of the state where the case is filed.

Medical costs, from emergency care and hospitalization through rehabilitation and, in brain-injury cases, in-home nursing care that may continue for life.²
Funeral and burial expenses, available specifically in wrongful death cases.¹⁸
Lost income and lost future earning capacity, available in both fatal and nonfatal cases.¹⁸
Pain and suffering. New York, for instance, limits pain and suffering damages in wrongful death cases to the deceased person’s conscious suffering before death.¹⁹
Loss of companionship for spouses, children, and parents.¹⁸
Punitive damages, awarded in cases of gross negligence, extreme recklessness, or willful misconduct.¹⁸

Nonfatal drowning claims can be as valuable as wrongful death claims, sometimes more so. When the brain is deprived of oxygen for more than four to six minutes, the result can be permanent cognitive impairment, loss of motor control, seizures, personality changes, or a persistent vegetative state.²⁰²¹ A $100 million verdict has been reported for a toddler who suffered catastrophic brain injuries after accessing an apartment complex pool through a broken gate.²²

What Defendants Will Argue

Comparative or contributory negligence is the most common defense. The argument is that the victim shared responsibility for the drowning. In most states, this reduces damages in proportion to the victim’s share of fault. In Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, any fault on the victim’s part bars recovery entirely.²³ Modified comparative negligence states set a threshold, usually 50% or 51%, beyond which the plaintiff recovers nothing.²⁴

Assumption of risk is the next frequent defense, especially against adult swimmers. It says a person who voluntarily enters the water accepts the inherent dangers. Courts still look at whether the victim actually understood the specific hazard that caused the drowning, and whether the owner’s negligence went beyond what a swimmer could reasonably have anticipated.²⁵ Defendants may also argue trespassing to reduce or eliminate the duty they owed, though that defense rarely works when the plaintiff is a child.¹

How Long You Have to File

Every state imposes a deadline, and missing it usually ends the case for good. The window varies by state and claim type. California gives two years for wrongful death but only six months to file a claim against a government entity.²⁶ Georgia allows two years, South Carolina three,²⁷ and Texas generally gives two years for personal injury or wrongful death.²⁸ Connecticut allows two years from the date of death but may permit filing within five years from the act that caused it.²⁹

Some states toll the deadline for minors or apply a discovery rule that starts the clock when the family learns, or should have learned, that negligence caused the death. In California, children under six have three years from the date of injury or until they turn eight, whichever comes first.²⁶ Claims against government entities almost always carry shorter deadlines and require a formal notice of claim before any suit can be filed.²

What Past Cases Have Been Worth

$104 million jury verdict in Florida for the family of Lorenzo Peterson, a 15-year-old trapped underwater by drain suction at an apartment pool in North Miami in 2000, against pump manufacturer Sta-Rite Industries. Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal voided the verdict in 2004 as “shockingly excessive” and ordered a new trial. Insurers for the apartment complex and a pool maintenance company had separately paid the family a combined $7 million.³⁰
$25 million verdict in Justice v. Bestway (USA), Inc. (2021), where a jury found an aboveground pool manufacturer 65% at fault for the drowning of six-year-old Ellieanna Justice.³¹
$24 million Philadelphia verdict in Weightman v. Park Lane East Apartment Complex and Progressive Pool Management (1995) for the drowning of five-year-old Destine Weightman. The pool management company took 75% of the liability, the apartment complex 25%.³
$20.73 million judgment in Abel v. Lack’s Beach Service (2022) against a private beach safety franchisee after an ocean drowning near Myrtle Beach.¹⁷
$18 million Texas settlement (2023), described as the largest U.S. settlement for a single-child drowning, involving a four-year-old boy who drowned at a Baytown apartment complex after entering the pool through an improperly secured gate that management knew had a history of being left unlatched.³²
$15.5 million Florida settlement (2025) for the drowning of a three-year-old at a Seminole County apartment complex.²²

Proving the Case

Drowning cases are hard to prove because the victim often can’t say what happened. The case gets built from physical evidence, documents, and expert testimony, and much of it can disappear fast.

The core records are pool maintenance logs, surveillance footage, and incident reports. Maintenance logs show whether the owner was inspecting, replacing equipment, and keeping the water clear; gaps or inconsistencies in those records can themselves be evidence of neglect.³³ Surveillance footage is often the single most valuable piece of evidence, and it can be overwritten within days.²⁸ Attorneys for drowning victims typically send immediate preservation demands to stop property managers from losing or altering records.³⁴ Property owners after an incident have been known to repair broken fences or gates and update maintenance logs.

Expert witnesses do heavy lifting. Aquatic safety experts evaluate whether a facility met industry standards for supervision, signage, and safety equipment. Forensic pathologists establish cause of death, which matters when a defendant argues a preexisting condition caused the drowning.³⁵ In product cases, engineers testify about whether equipment met standards set by groups like ASTM International and whether safer alternatives existed. In Justice v. Bestway, a pools and spas expert testified that the aboveground pool’s walls were climbable by a child and that the manufacturer’s safety warnings were inadequate, which contributed to the $25 million verdict.³¹

Straightforward cases with clear liability can resolve within months. Cases with government defendants, multiple parties, or contested facts commonly take one to two years or longer.²

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